The History of the Soccer Ball

According to the Football Bible, the first soccer ball was invented by ancient civilizations about 3000 years ago. The Chinese, Aztec and Mayan Indians and Egyptians came up with their own balls made up of different materials, such as stuffed animal skin, latex from the rubber tree, seeds wrapped in linen or hair wrapped in linen.

In the middle ages in the Medieval Europe they used pig bladder to make the ball.

In 1855 the first round soccer ball was made by Charles Goodyear by applying a new method of treating rubber called "vulcanization". Later in order to make it less easy to puncture, they added a leather exterior that made the ball stronger and more sphere like.

In 1872, the English Football Association (FA) declared that the official ball should be spherical and its circumference should be between 27 and 28 inches, with a weight of between 14 and 16 oz. This is the standard that still remains today.


In 1888 after the establishment of the English Footbal League, the mass production of leather soccer balls were spurred.

In 1950, the ball was made waterproof by coating it with a synthetic material. In 1970 Adidas introduced the Telstar Backminster type ball for that year´s World Cup. It was made from 32 panels, 20 of them hexagon in white and 12 pentagon in black. In the 1974 World Cup the same Telstar ball was used, and was declared by FIFA for the first time the Official World Cup Ball.

The 32 panel ball continued to be used until the 2006 World Cup, when Adidas introduced the 14 panel ball, named Teamgeist or "Team Spirit" in German, a seamless ball with bonded panels instead of stitched. In 2010 the new ball was Jubalani (Celebration in South African), made with only 8 panels of synthetic material with better performance and feel.

As an anecdote, during the 1930 cup, Argentina and Uruguay could not agree on which ball to use for the final match. So was decided to use the Argentinian ball during the first half, which ended 2-1 in favor of Argentina, and with the Uruguayan ball in the second half which ended the game 4-2 in favor of Uruguay, using their ball.

For the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil, Adidas introduced the Brazuca ball. The name was selected after over a million fan´s votes in Brazil.

New balls are already being developed with amazing technology. A ball named Ctrus will need no air, and will change colors when the ball is out of bounds or when it crosses the goal line.